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Oct 15 The Ones Who Broke The Mold

My dad took a DNA ancestry test because we don’t know where our last name comes from.

We have very white skin that burns to a crisp in the sun, wavy brunette hair and greenish brown eyes. Sometimes I’m told I look Irish, or German…my mother tells us we have English blood. All I know is that every time someone asks me, “what is that?” when I tell them my last name is Beadlescomb, I say I don’t know, probably a hodgepodge of a name people didn’t know how to write or say back in the olden days.

“You’re lucky you’ll get to marry out of that one,” they say, making note of how weird or strange my last name is. It’s crossed my mind before how I’d love to marry a Smith or a Hall to save time and fit my signature on receipts, but what right do they have to assume I’ll just give my own name away?

I find myself saying, “Yeah, that’s true,” before handing them my signature squeezed onto the dotted line of their receipt.

***

I believe that our actions, our thoughts, our successes and failures are byproducts of the choices we make. I read books about psychology and the mind meant to inspire positive action, watch TED talks on productivity and healing destructive thought patterns. I believe in taking responsibility for mistakes I’ve made and pain I’ve caused. I’ve seen that choosing my daily rituals and taking action toward my dreams is the only way to bring myself closer to the person I want to become.

But even in believing in the power of my autonomy, I’ve learned not to underestimate the influence of backgrounds—I know my ancestors have played their role in shaping the person I am today. In America, any one of us who is not Native American can trace our lives back to the bravery of an ancestor who chose to leave their home, start fresh in new land. I’ve heard stories of great grandfathers who smuggled themselves onto ships, of families splitting apart in hopes that their heartbreak would one day lead to a better life. My father traced our line back years, and years, and years—generations of Beadlescomb’s stuck in the south—before he found the man who gave us all the chance to be raised as American citizens. My best friend only has to look back to her parents to find the brave two who left all they knew to make a better life for her.

Some of us come from ancestors torn from their families to be sold into slavery. From ancestors desperate to escape war zones. From ancestors who crossed oceans to follow the American dream. From ancestors who were hungry or heartbroken, unwelcome where they were or too adventurous to stay still.

There is so much talk anymore of what it means to be a “true” American. We see images of light-skinned people waving flags, drinking beer, shooting handguns. People with eagle tattoos on their backs in the stands of football games. These people are Americans, there is no doubt.

But let’s not forget we all come from families who started as strangers to this land. My family comes from a long line of individuals who created their identities as farmers in the south, but the results of my father’s DNA test didn’t say “Southern.” He is a puzzle made up of pieces of European blood, the great-grandchild of an individual who decided to cross the Atlantic with only a dream of what life might look like on the distant coast.

The identity of the true American may look different to us now, but it will always stay rooted in the trials of immigration.

***

So much of life in my 20s has looked like deciding who I want to be. It’s making choices and chasing dreams, travelling and finding people who bring out the best in me. I don’t think it’s a process that ever stops.

Sometimes I like to stop and think back to the person who braved an adventure that changed the course of life for my family. I hold tightly to this long last name that someone probably made up when he decided to create a new identity for himself. I think about my father, who was the first to break the mold and leave the east coast for California. I think about my friend’s parents who left India and ended up in the same city as me—I have them to thank for our friendship. I think about the people who speak in broken English because they braved learning a new life and language. I think about ancestors who lived through unimaginable trials to lead us here and now, fighting every day for a better life for the generations who will come next.

I like to let that push me into doing the things I’m afraid to do. I like to imagine the generations who will come many years after me, imagine what the choices I make now might be able to do for them. Whether it’s standing up or speaking out, participating in protests or marches, relocating or letting myself fall in love. Being the person who I want to be, I think, comes with fear. But I’m allowed to do it because of the people who came before me. I’m meant to do it for the ones who will come later.

My last name is weird and difficult to pronounce. But it’s my legacy to trace back. It’s the point at which my great-grandchildren will be able to look back and say, “She’s one of the ones who broke the mold. She’s one of the ones who brought us here.”

As difficult as it is to sign on paperwork, I don’t imagine myself ever giving that up.

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You should just drive across the country,” she said lightheartedly, and laughter ensued. Drive across the country, what an absurd idea. But then the joke got taken one step too far and all of a sudden we were plotting about who would pay my rent for a month and where I could stop to stay the night in Oklahoma and Arizona and California. Suddenly, I was calling my parents and asking if I would still be allowed to come home for Christmas if I made a rather (arguably) reckless decision and drove my tired, thirteen-year-old car across the country. (It took some negotiation but I am, indeed, still allowed to come home.) We sat in a coffee shop for an hour and hammered out the plan and concluded that there really wouldn’t be one, that sometimes you have to take a leap, whether or not it looks like a promising landing, and whether or not people are going to speculate about where your mind might have run off to.

Just as you can imagine, college graduation season is packed with all the emotions. You feel relief, excitement, stress and pride. The emotion most people don’t associate with graduation and what I didn’t expect to feel, though, is regret.

Since taking that first step, I’ve made the trip back to speak in numerous classes and even at other events. Yes, the introvert in me still needs plenty of time to recover after public speaking. But every time I went back to campus, it got easier. With every step—every time I said “yes” when I wanted to say “no”—I gained momentum.

That’s another great thing about baby steps: every step you take builds momentum—stamina to keep going, strength for the journey.

In all seriousness, though, I felt like I had transported right back to where I was my senior year, caught in the in-between of trying to hold on so tightly to those last few months of my life as a student, and looking so forward to venturing out of it. But it brought back that old familiar, restless feeling—the same feeling I had when I got back from London, and when I first moved here—of wanting so many things and trying to figure out a way to make them all coexist.

Between stressing for Walter White’s father-of-the-year-campaign and my ambiguous job future, the happy hours continued. I have the utmost appreciation for these friends that took me out of my own darkness and enjoyed a beer or two. We treasured our three dollar drinks, our pita and chips, our half off cocktails, our half off wines, our chances to escape the pressures of “do you have a job yet?” and the looming student loan emails. The bitter hops of a summer ale washed away our problems, reminding us that if Emily Blunt and John Krasinksi found each other, we too can find jobs and futures that welcome us wholeheartedly.

It’s okay that people leave—I think that’s something we rarely hear anymore. Our emphasis so often heads toward the dramatic. Big fights, long-distance forgetfulness, regrets and bitterness over something that used to fill you with so much sweetness. But then there are the people who just left, or maybe you left them. Your lives took you in two different directions and you drifted.

Last winter, as I hid under a blanket and bemoaned the graveyard that is modern dating in the city of Nashville, Tennessee (where every boy is contractually obligated to include in his I-don’t-actually-want-a-relationship script: “But I think you’re really cool!”), I told Chelsey that we should just stop having expectations altogether. Because rarely are expectations met, so why bother having them in the first place? I figured I could protect myself from any future disappointment by kicking expectations out completely. Expect nothing, I argued to her.

Removed from the college bubble and re-planted in a new life, the field is wiped clean again. I have to again make a real, conscious decision about where I fit in and how I stack up. There seem to be metrics in place for who’s “winning” post-grad—high-power job? committed relationship? best apartment? coolest city?—but there’s no prize. New York is enormous, and social media is a daily tidal wave, and there have been days when I feel so small.

I recently went through a breakup. I felt like I was on a train going through a tunnel. I couldn’t see clearly. I couldn’t think clearly. There were no mountains or trees, just a steady presence of hurt and confusion.

It’s been six months since I graduated from university and if I’m perfectly candid, it’s been a rough ride. People keep telling me that it’s okay to not know what you’re doing at this stage in life. “You’re so young, take time to figure it out!”

I have been told some variation of that statement hundreds of times since April. As reassuring as it is to hear, I haven’t felt content with what I’m doing since I was in school. I miss writing every day. I miss being challenged, studying, learning new things and that fly-by-the-seat-of-my pants adrenaline rush I get anytime I’m working under a strict deadline.

I will never forget the night leading up to graduation that I had lain in my apartment crying and texting my brother about not wanting to celebrate my accomplishment. I had been through interview after interview yet had nothing to show for it. I felt like a failure. My parents and I had both invested so much money in this dream of mine and here I was, two weeks from graduating college and only having a part time job paying barely over minimum wage to show for it.

Amanda graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2015 with a degree in literature and creative writing—which meant she never thought she'd land a "real world" job. She now works as an editor, proofreader and social media coordinator in Los Angeles and spends all of her free time writing, line dancing, at the beach or watching "Gilmore Girls" on Netflix. Follow her on Twitter @abeadlescomb to keep up with all new pictures of her cat and 140-character complaints about missing that time she lived in London.

Amanda graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2015 with a degree in literature and creative writing—which meant she never thought she'd land a "real world" job. She now works as an editor, proofreader and social media coordinator in Los Angeles and spends all of her free time writing, line dancing, at the beach or watching "Gilmore Girls" on Netflix. Follow her on Twitter @abeadlescomb to keep up with all new pictures of her cat and 140-character complaints about missing that time she lived in London.

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